Rago Arts & Auctions Center (You've seen David Rago and his wife Suzanne Perrault on the Road Show for art pottery)
Lambertville, NJ
April 12, 2008
DONALD DESKEY Silver-plated metal desk lamp, 1927: Estimate $2000-$4000 Hammer Price $115,000.00, with buyers premium $138,000
Extremely rare, never auctioned before. Not even in pristine condition. My partner bought it at an estate sale in Queens for $10.00. He knew something was up when Rago started to add many additional pictures to their auction's web site, due to the amount of condition requests (condition reports) they were receiving.
You kind of forced me to reveal too much info about my business, and I didn't really mean to be a braggart. But here it is:
78: DONALD DESKEY Silver-plated metal desk lamp, 1927. : Lot 78
The $110,000 hammer is an error. It was bid up another $5,000 that was not recorded (Of course we got paid on the additional 5K)
By the way, the bidding war did not go on for "29" times. I think with all the left bids they received before the auction, he opened it up at something like $20,000. With so much interest, I think it quickly moved up to 50K, and then as bid increments are increased at that level there was probably only 5 at the most still bidding. Though, I did not watch the auction live, my partner did. I was busy and forgot what time it was going off. Also I really did not put a lot of interest in it due to the low pre-auction estimates. My business partner was watching live on the computer, while I was puttering around the store dealing with a customer, and he used to have a nasty habit of not saying anything till the auction ended. When it did, he said the Deskey sold for 10K, and I was okay that's real good. Then he said x 11, and I was like, what the f--K did you just say? And he goes it sold for 110k. That's when I flipped out. It wasn't till Monday (sale was Saturday) that we found out the actual price was 115k. Needless to say, we don't buy lottery tickets, we go to estate sales.